This website is going to be a portal for a new project that I want to try out. I’m going to post basic, bare bones tracks of music that people can add to and upload until we have a kick ass song that will melt the ladies hearts and make people clap they hands and dance to the beat! This idea was first realized last Saturday night when I posted a simple drumbeat with guitar to my Facebook page. With 24 hours it had drums on it, vocals, keyboards, bass, you name it. Here is the end result. In the spirit of this project this music will be available for free download. In the event that we have a full album’s worth of material we might make it available for download with any monies generated going to charity. Here is the result of our first endeavor:

“Ornery Cowboy” by Dean Ween and his Facebook Friends.

So I recorded a few tracks, a guitar and a simple metronome beat, totally bare bones, and posted it on my personal page. I invited everyone to add to it and see if we could create a song that was listenable. Some of the shit people did was really bad, others blew my mind. with the help of mike huetz, who i’ve known for a long time and did some classic editing, we were able to line up these tracks and make it into a “song”. i’m posting the original track i put up, and the finished product. i can’t keep track of who ended up on the final version but needless to say, this is pretty impressive. My original bare bones version first:

and the final version which is Dean Ween on guitar and Bass, Mike Huetz (mad scientist, drum programming, editing, god knows what else), Jason Bambeezle on vocals, Laura Tate and her husband on 2nd Bass, Christopher Michael on Clavinet. Thanks to the others who didn’t make the cut, in most cases we just ran out of space—the song is complete and there’s no room for any more tracks!

Well, this jam was a lot harder than the first one, we put a lot of time and love into this and I got swamped with a million contributions. Thank you to everyone who submitted tracks, there were so many good ideas from so many people–this time we upped the ante with a more difficult arrangement and were rewarded when everyone rose to the challenge. The song (which started out as nothing but a drumbeat) evolved into this funky throwback to the sound of the early 70′s Meters or War. The title ended up being “Someone Greased The Fat Man” and here is the personnel on the final track:

Here is the song–play it loud—after this experience I’m gonna take a breather and think about our next direction, which constantly evolves with every submission. If you have submitted tracks and they didn’t get used, please don’t give up on this project. there are only so many tracks you can put on one tune (we can’t use 11 guitar tracks–that’s about 7 too many) and finding the balance of tracks to get the most cohesive song is ever bit as important as the song itself. If that makes any sense. Play it loud and enjoy. Thanks to Mike Huetz for working overtime on the mix.

FACEBOOK BAND ALERT! We have made tremendous headway on our latest jam, the submissions have been incredible for the most part and we’ve developed a concept and theme. Now we need a title and for someone to do killer funky vocals. To guide you along I did a little bit of scat singing to show you what direction I think it should take. I’m thinking old Meter’s “Fire On the Bayou” or War’s “Cisco Kid” as a reference point. When you here my “scat” (huhuhuh) track it will become obvious. For title’s think of something funky that flows well with my groove idea, like “Someone Stuck the Greaseman”….etc….have at it! Thanks to the killer musicians that contributed so far! Here is my reference version with me scat singing

Here is the basic bass and drum track we’re working with. the drums were played originally by Rich Scanella and sampled, sliced and diced and looped by me originally and completely overhauled by Mike Huetz. See the instructions above, email submissions to vealmarsala@gmail.com

This tune is 81 BPM and is in the key of A. Have at it. This is the second song in our Sat. night music club, or the “GET SOME” series. Add your tracks, and mail them back, follow the instructions I linked to below. A good place to start if you’re thinking about vocals would be the descending chorus part, that sounds like “I wanna take you higher”, don’t be afraid to give it a title and a chorus, but either way, have fun with it! - Mickey

The MOST IMPORTANT key is to take the track and never clip any time off of it, if it was 3:35 seconds when you downloaded it, that’s what it ashould be when you mail it back with your new tracks on there. As far as software damn near anything will work, we are only dealing with mp3 s and wav files, no native formats. You can use pro-tools (what i use) or the easiest and must have program “audacity”, which is free, as long as no one trims the time down you can just drop it in and line it up. simple as it gets.

Now you have your track recorded and want to send it back—before you mail it to me it, put all the pre-existing music to one side, the left channel, and put your track to the other side, in the right channel, and voila—-we’re done and you’re in, provided that you have a shred of talent. For stereo tracks, just line it up with the existing tracks I made and DON’T TRIM ANY TIME OFF OF IT. I will drop it in and everything will be fine, I will sort out your levels in the mix. Send me two mixes, one with you blended in where you see fit, and one with your stand-alone tracks. AS LONG AS YOU DON’T TRIM ANY TIME OFF OF IT!